This invention relates to a dispenser and dispensing method for rolled web material and, more specifically, for flexible sheet material such as paper toweling wherein a stop mechanism is associated with the feed roller in the dispenser to allow the feed roller to undergo one revolution and then be stopped in dispensing an individual sheet of the rolled web material.
Dispensers for rolled flexible sheet material, such as paper toweling, are well-known in the art and many of these dispensers include mechanisms for perforating or severing a web of material to divide the web into individual sheets. Towel dispensers have also been developed with various mechanisms or techniques to provide a waste-restricting system, namely, the dispenser permitting only a single individual sheet to be dispensed to the intending user at one time with a delay being provided before the user can gain access to a second individual sheet.
For sanitary reasons, towel dispensers in public washrooms should preferably be operable by merely pulling down on a exposed portion of the towel web with no need to touch parts of the dispenser such as cranks, buttons or levers commonly present in many prior art types of towel dispensers, these actuators serving to activate the towel dispenser in supplying a length of towel web or individual toweling sheets.
At the same time, for the sake of economy, the dispenser should eliminate unnecessary waste of paper toweling while still not unduly restricting use of the toweling to the intending user. Certain dispensers now on the market accomplish these objectives by such devices as spring-operated feeding mechanisms and vacuum cup timers. Spring-operated devices have the disadvantage that in being cocked while the towel is being withdrawn from the dispenser, a substantial drag is placed on the web of paper toweling often resulting in it being prematurely torn where it is held by the wet fingers of the intending user. Vacuum cup timers, in providing needed time intervals between withdrawal of individual towel sheets to thus reduce waste have the disadvantage that the desired preset time intervals cannot be reliably maintained especially at very short time interval settings.